Just a little note…

An informal group blog featuring posts on a wide variety of subjects by a crew of authors in several different countries. Just sit back, have some fun, and maybe learn something.
If you've got any tips or suggestions, feel free to email us at TizonasWeblog at gmail.com, and one of us will get back to you.

A prominent Saudi scholar warned youths studying abroad of using ethanol or other fuel that contains alcohol in their cars since they could be committing a sin, local press reported Thursday.

Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking, and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.

Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it “is basically made up of alcohol.”

UPDATE: Just thinking more on this… Yesterday I had a blood test down at the Path Lab and the nurse used ~~GASP~~ an alcohol swab to prepare the site. WTF are Good Muslims supposed to use – goat saliva?

Like this:

Ok, here’s the back story. The Australian Football League wants another two teams in the league to bring in more revenue and generate more support for the game, which is for the most part, based in Victoria with ten Victorian-based teams, two in WA, two in SA, one in Sydney, and one in Brisbane.

The interstate teams (WA, SA, NSW, QLD) have always had their successes on the field, and all teams involved have had some great talent. So Andrew Demetriou, the head of the AFL, is entertaining a proposal for a new team based in Sydney’s Western suburbs.

Now, this is amongst the stupidest ideas I’ve ever read. Demetriou is considering having a faith-based team. Yep, he wants to launch an Irish-based team, which would mostly consist of Protestants.

The problems I see with the proposal are these:

Where does one find some Irish Protestants in Sydney’s western suburbs? It’s an area with a lot of people who believe in God, certainly, but they’re sure not Protestants.

AFL is very much an equalized game. You leave your religion/politics/family heritage/whatever off the ground. On the ground, you play for your team. This idea would mean that now you bring those things onto the ground. Old rivalries will be brought back into the game, and those rivalries are stronger than Everyone vs Collingwood (as hard as that is to believe)…

It sets a precedent. What can the AFL then do if there’s a team of Irish-Catholics who want to play, and then a team of Roman-Catholics, and then a team of Buddhists, a team of Muslims, a team of Pagans and so on down the line? If they’ve got the requisite number of players and the start-up cash, the AFL would have a lot of trouble saying no. Then it turns into a religious game.

Australians don’t much care about other people’s religions, unless they’re attempting to kill us or force them on us. By turning the AFL into something faith-based, they’re ensuring that it makes it harder for the non-religious to give a crap about the game. And for many, their football team is their religion.

Enough is enough Demetriou. You’ve tried to push the “Super-Goal” idea and it failed. You’ve tried to overhaul the AFL Tribunal, and it’s failed for the most part. You’ve tried to discourage drugs from the game, but in paying 21-28 year olds well over $200,000 a year you’ve made that hard because what else are they going to spend their dough on?

UPDATE: Further details have come to light, and the team will not be made up of Irish descendants currently playing AFL in Sydney’s western suburbs. It will be made up of a team of Irish players being brought in from Ireland to boost the game’s international appeal. That puts this in a very different light.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca’s was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

This of course, requires us to ignore the fact that magnetic north is constantly changing. But boy, will it be fun watching them move Mecca every couple of years! I wonder if they’ll use something like this? If so, it’s a good thing they’re constantly breeding with goats, because they’ll need an awful lot of them. I digress, however, and back to the article.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

I’m thinking, if that’s the criteria for deciding what time standard to use, and it has to do with power, shouldn’t we be using a time standard from the USA? I mean, the same types of people pushing this Mecca-time thing are constantly telling us that the USA has too much power and is always taking advantage and pushing the boundaries, so let’s have fun with it!

I demand my USA time immediately. I expect nothing less from the Big Bad USA. I demand my full oppression! Stop giving me freedom and oppress me! I can’t rely on Australia to do it now we’ve gotten rid of that evil HoWARd.

The latest three messages from al-Qaeda addressing the Sunni community uncover the depth of the crisis that al-Qaeda is facing in its former host community.

The threatening tone of the missives from the alleged Abu Omar Baghdadi and Aby Ayyub, and the insulting tone of the second by Zawahiri, reflect mistrust, anxiety and a dire need to retrieve what was lost.

Death threats do not represent a serious call for cooperation on an achievable objective. This “work-for-me-or-I-kill-you” tone is completely different from the usual recruiting slogans that have focused on the ideology of fighting for absolute truth against absolute evil.

Those slogans have failed, which is why they have been discarded and replaced by threats and an effort to seek out third parties to render verdicts on disagreements, which is what Baghdadi alluded to when he proposed that some (not all!) Sunni clerics come forward to mediate between al-Qaeda and the public.

This call for mediation indicates first, that al-Qaeda has lost direct contact with the public and second, that there are still some clerics involved with al-Qaeda.

The secondary characters are a policeman holding a speed radar, a sheriff, and a lawyer.

The primary character is caught by the policeman driving 64mph in a 30mph zone, which is normally an offence that results in instant disqualification. But the primary character in this performance gets out of this offence with a £200 fine and was given six penalty points.

Anwar is a Muslim, and has two wives, living a fair distance apart, and a restaurant in an entirely different area. The court decided that because of his need to attend to his family duties, and his need to operate the restaurant and keep his family financially stable, he should not lose his licence.

When Anwar was questioned on the matter by the media, he responded:

“It is true I have two wives.

“Muslim men are allowed up to four. But I am not a religious leader and it is not my place to comment.

“As a matter of respect to my wives I would not comment on my home life.

“The sheriff did not ban me because I need my licence to run my business, although my wives were also part of the decision.”

I can only agree with the assessment of the sentence offered to the media by Lorna Jackson, head of Brake, a road safety charity:

“Regardless of the number of wives or businesses this man drives to, he broke a law which is there to protect everyone.

“Travelling just a few miles over the limit in a 30mph zone can be the difference between life and death if you hit someone, let alone driving at more than twice the speed limit.

“Drivers know the law, and they know the punishment they could face when they break it.

“For the courts to allow someone to keep their licence when they have so blatantly flouted the law and put peoples’ lives at risk, on the basis of an excuse such as this, is astonishing.”

The fact that this man’s multiple wives (although multiple marriages are illegal in the UK) played a part in the decision strikes me as incredibly suspect. After all, does this decision mean that the judgment can be extended to all business owners with two wives? And does it mean that eventually, all of those citizens with only one wife/husband will be discriminated against on the basis of their marriages, and in turn, their religion, which Anwar claims is the reason he’s allowed two wives?

A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.

A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.

“Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet,” the Imam says, according to the report. “If you don’t believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain.”

The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam’s position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.

On February 4, 2008, in an act of segregation disguised as “collaboration,” Harvard University set the clock back fifty years by agreeing to ban men from a popular university gym for six hours each week to appease Muslim women. Harvard University spokesman Robert Mitchell stated to me that this was done at the behest of a group of women “whose religion does not allow them to remove their burqas and/or hijab in the presence of men.”

“A group of Muslim women made a request, we thought it was reasonable,” Harvard athletics spokesman Matt Lavoie told me in an interview. “It’s a religious issue, that’s all.”